A broad set of criteria is used for evaluating the extent to which the AJLC is meeting numerous ecological and educational objectives.

• Feedback: Is feedback control effectively incorporated into biological and mechanical systems in order to optimize performance? Is feedback displayed effectively in human-technological interfaces so that occupants and visitors are made conscious of and can respond to patterns of energy and material use? Learn more
• Energy: How does the pattern and magnitude of energy use compare with other buildings? To what extent is the Center powered by solar energy? What changes are taking place that might alter future performance? Learn more
• Biodiversity: Do the landscape and building technologies foster biodiversity? Are the ecological and mechanical systems diverse in function as well as in structure? Learn more
• Materials: How were materials used in the construction of the AJLC? What effect do these materials have on local, regional and global ecosystems? Is the degree of internal recycling within this building-landscape system changing over time? Learn more
• Impact: Does the AJLC maximize opportunities for students, for faculty and staff, and for local, regional and global scale communities to learn about ecological design? Does it serve as a laboratory that allows us to evaluate and improve the practice of ecological design? Learn more
• Community: How does the AJLC support the mission of Oberlin College and surrounding community? Has it served as a catalyst that stimulates thought and action which addresses the relationship between human society and the rest of the natural world? Learn more

Feedback

Since the primary function of the AJLC is education, designing feedback that provides regular occupants and visitors with easily accessible real-time information on ecological performance is a top priority. Our goal is to make the flows of energy and cycles of matter between the built and natural environments visible and easy to interpet. The premise of this work is that real-time feedback on ecological performance increases awareness, connectedness, and motivation to act. New feedback of this type may be a necessary prerequisite for facilitating a more sustainable relationship between humans, technology, and the natural world.

Over the last four years students, faculty and collaborators from the National Renewable Energy Lab have installed over 150 environmental sensors throughout the building and landscape that monitor everything from production and consumption of electricity to water use in the landscape and the metabolic activity of the Living Machine. To our knowledge, no other academic building and landscape has been instrumented and monitored to this extent. Data collected from the monitoring system is rendered into graphical form and displayed on a monitor in the building's atrium and this website.

The AJLC incorporates, and has the potential to add, a wide variety of interacting biological and mechanical feedback mechanisms to enhance performance and educational value.

A programmable logic computer monitors and regulates the building's mechanical system. Since the building's design includes new and changing combinations of technology, the computer operations strategy needs to be continually assessed and revised in order to optimize building performance. For instance, each of the classrooms is equipped with a carbon dioxide sensor that essentially monitors the degree of human occupancy. There are a variety of ways to integrate carbon dioxide data into the control system in order to provide needed fresh air while minimizing energy costs associated with heating and delivering this air. Optimizing the control logic for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system during all four seasons is therefore a continuous process.

Energy

It could be argued that energy use and associated pollution is the central environmental problem of our time. With this in mind, the AJLC was conceived as a building that would minimize energy use and meet much of its own power needs through passive solar heating and ventilation, natural and high efficiency electric lighting, and an array of photovoltaic cells installed on the roof of the building.

Gross direct energy consumption in the AJLC between March, 2001 and March, 2002 was 30,000 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per square foot. This represents 39 percent of the national average reported for educational buildings, 36 percent of the consumption for nine other Oberlin buildings (data from a 2000 study), and just slightly lower than those values reported for Vermont Law School's Oakes Hall, which is often cited as a standard for energy-efficient buildings at our latitude. Adding solar energy production to the equation lowers AJLC net energy consumption to 14,000 BTUs per sqare foot, which amounts to 41 percent of Vermont Law School and 17 percent of the average for Oberlin buildings.

Source consumption accounts for the embodied energy of building materials and technologies. The designers of the AJLC sought to minimize source energy consumption by prioritizing local and low embodied energy materials in its construction. While inclusion of source energy substantially increases gross consumption for the AJLC, net energy use still remains a fraction of other buildings.

Of particular note is the effect of natural lighting and high efficiency fixtures on energy performance. In spite of nighttime classes and numerous dinner events held at the Center, the Center consumed only 28% of the lighting energy reported for typical educational buildings and 22% of that consumed by Oberlin academic buildings. The majority of energy (55%) consumed in the AJLC during this time period was used for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. However, shifting heating loads from a boiler to heat pumps achieved a 50% decrease in heating energy in March 2002 relative to March 2001 (calculated differences in energy requirements were normalized for temperature differences).

The data also indicate ample room for further improvement in performance.

A number of errors were made in the design of the heating system for the Center: electric boilers were used where heat pumps should have been installed and heat pumps were mismatched with ground water supply temperatures. Ground water wells may also have been undersized. According to our colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Lab, errors of this type are unfortunately quite common, particularly in green projects that combine innovative technologies that are unfamiliar to most engineers.

Electrical energy purchased from the grid can be more environmentally costly than heat produced onsite by directly burning fossil fuels. For this reason, it is prudent for Oberlin College to correct design errors in the heating system and to aggressively pursue additional energy saving opportunities as they arise and as new technologies become available. By adopting this as a long-term strategy, we can expect a trajectory of decreasing energy use into the future.

Biodiversity

In contrast to typical academic landscapes, which are often designed exclusively for aesthetic value, the AJLC landscape was designed to use renewable resources (like rainwater and solar energy) to support structural and functional biodiversity, to demonstrate community-scale sustainable agriculture, and to minimize negative effects on downstream ecosystems.

The building and portion of the surrounding landscape that is managed according to ecological design principles, occupy approximately 58,000 square feet. Landscape ecosystems planted and managed by biology professor David Benzing and students include a restored wetland and forest, lawn areas planted with a special low-mow mix, a small fruit orchard, and a raised-bed organic vegetable garden. The wetland and forest incorporate over 70 native plant species. In addition to the obvious educational and aesthetic value, high biodiversity allows the AJLC wetland to serve as a valuable species repository for Northeast Ohio, a bioregion which has lost over 90% of its native wetland ecosystems.

In the year after our data monitoring system was installed, approximately 45 thousand gallons of water fell on this landscape.

In addition to provide critical habitat and biodiversity, the wetland and cistern also serve as a storm water retention system. Following a rainstorm, water falling on most academic buildings and grounds quickly drains to storm sewers and results in surges in flow that can damage receiving rivers and streams. Rain that falls on the AJLC building and landscape enters the storm water system more slowly or is retained on sight. Several thousand gallons of water captured by the building's roof are directed into a storage cistern and used to maintain the water level in the wetland pond during dry periods of the summer. Information now gathered from depth sensors in the wetland and cistern provide us with the capacity to develop feedback logic that will maximize reuse of water in the landscape and minimize storm water runoff. Eventually, we plan to use water stored in the cistern and cleaned by the Living Machine to service all of the Center's landscape needs.

The garden and orchard demonstrate that a significant fraction of food can be produced in backyards and public spaces-even in urban settings.

Urban gardening and local agriculture are alternatives to reliance on a contemporary food distribution system which transports food an average of 1,300 miles and burns 10 units of fossil fuel energy for each unit of food energy delivered to our table. Each summer, students plant and harvest a wide array of produce from the raised-bed organic garden. The dwarf fruit orchard will reach maturity within the next five years and will produce roughly 50 bushels of organically grown apples and pears per year, and several gallons of blueberries, serviceberries and raspberries.

The landscape as a whole is in what ecologists refer to as an "aggregating stage" of ecosystem development.

Solar radiation in the photosynthetically active portion of the spectrum is being used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stored as biomass in plants, soil and sediments. Long-term storage of carbon dioxide is important for reducing the impact of fossil fuel combustion on the climate. Wetlands are often particularly high in productivity: a preliminary study by students in Dr. Petersen's systems ecology class found a measurable increase in wetland sediment carbon between fall of 2000 and fall of 2001. Assuming that current management practices are maintained at the AJLC, soils, wetland sediments, and woody plants will continue to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the next century.

Materials

The AJLC was designed to minimize negative environmental impacts both on and off site. In terms of material use, this meant favoring biodegradable, recycled, and recyclable products and also favoring materials that were renewably extracted.

All of the wood used in the building was either recycled or harvested from forests that were certified as sustainably managed. Low volatile organic compound (VOC) containing paints and adhesives were used throughout the building to maintain top indoor air quality. Carpeting is leased from Interface Corporation as a product of service. It will be sent back to the company for re-manufacture when it wears out rather than being disposed in a landfill.

Our economy does not currently account for many of the environmental costs associated with resource extraction, manufacture and disposal. As a result, a number of the design choices for the AJLC required the purchase of more expensive materials.

The Living Machine (LM) cleans organic waste and nutrients from all AJLC wastewater. LM-treated wastewater is recycled within the building as toilet flush water and to irrigate the landscape. Approximately 67% of AJLC water use during Spring Semester 2004 was internally-recycled LM effluent.

The Living Machine is an ecologically engineered aquatic ecosystem designed to treat wastewater. As with the ecosystems in the landscape, the Living Machine is still maturing rapidly and we expect it to produce higher quality effluent once the plant community becomes firmly established in the final "polishing marsh." One might legitimately argue that the scale of Living Machine technology is better suited to a small community than single building. For example, heating loads and pumps for this system consume a significant fraction of the total energy budget for the AJLC. These costs are relatively fixed, so increasing the inflow would have marginal effects on overall energy costs. In this setting, the system is ultimately an educational and research tool. A team of student operators and lab assistants maintain the system and monitor its treatment performance. It has been the focus of many student and faculty research projects and is also a popular and accessible example of ecological design for AJLC visitors of diverse backgrounds.

Impact

The AJLC was conceived as a "building that teaches"; that is, a facility in which the lessons embodied in technology and design choices serve to reinforce rather than contradict lessons taught in its classrooms.

The AJLC has been an integral component of education at Oberlin since 1992, when David Orr offered a year long course in ecological design that focused on defining design criteria for an environmental studies center at Oberlin College. Since completion of its construction in early 2000 the AJLC has proved to be a hands-on laboratory for studying principles of ecological design. For example, Environmental Studies faculty Dr. John Petersen has developed case studies, lesson plans, and semester-long research projects on systems and technologies used in the AJLC for courses. The AJLC is also a focus of Professor Katy Janda's courses including Fundamentals of Building Performance. In 2001, a practicum in green building technology and education focused entirely on technologies employed in the AJLC and development of its website. In 2003, another practicum course has focused on developing interactive displays and installations that reveal the story of the AJLC to occupants and visitors.

Faculty from diverse disciplines including biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, dance, and emerging arts have incorporated study of and reflection on the AJLC into their curricula. Interdisciplinary collaborations have also emerged. For instance, environmental studies, biology, and art faculty together developed a course entitled "Art and the Environment". Nationally recognized environmental artists visited and worked with students to consider how art might be used to augment the educational mission of the AJLC. In adddition to course offerings, a wide variety of lectures and symposia sponsored and hosted by the AJLC have addressed issues ranging from global climate change to architectural education to economic mechanisms for addressing environmental problems.

The AJLC has also provided a variety of opportunities for independent student research, winter term projects, work-study and internships focusing on ecological design.

Each semester the Environmental Studies Program hires 10 work-study students as Living Machine operators. These students have the opportunity to develop a hands-on understanding of an ecologically engineered wastewater treatment facility. Numerous private readings, winter term projects, assistantships, summer research experiences, and honors projects focusing on technologies incorporated in the AJLC have been supervised by Environmental Studies faculty. Many Oberlin graduates who have participated in courses or other programs at the AJLC go on to pursue advanced degrees and careers in the emerging field of ecological design.

The AJLC has proved to be an interesting and valuable asset to broader communities within and outside of Oberlin.

To date staff and student guides have given tours of the building to well over 8,000 visitors (over 300 per month), including 520 students from local and regional public schools and over 550 students from colleges and universities around the country. This does not include the numerous private tours given to professional architects, environmental designers and faculty and staff from other colleges that come with the intent of directly applying lessons learned at the AJLC to their own design projects. Although substantial opportunities exist for improving the AJLC, the building and landscape are recognized as a national and international model of ecological design from which others are interested in learning.

The AJLC serves as a resource that supports a broad range of College and Community activities.

A variety of courses that contain no particular environmental theme are taught in the AJLC by professors in various disciplines including English, Creative Writing, African American Studies. The atrium has proved to be a popular spot for special dinner events. Artistic uses of the space have included sculpture, painting, dance, performance art, and music, ranging from opera to Obertones (a student acapella group) to electronic music. The facility has also been used for summer camps, teacher-training workshops, and the Oberlin Quaker Meeting. Although the popularity of the AJLC results in increased site energy consumption; use of the building provides critical opportunities to educate members of the community who may have no prior interest in environmental issues.

Community

The AJLC serves as a nexus for local, regional and national dialog on key environmental issues of our time.

This is evident in the range of groups utilizing it for meetings and in new organizations that have been inspired and supported by the AJLC. In 2000, the AJLC was the site of the Second Nature Conference of College Presidents which brought presidents from around the country together to consider campus environmental policy. Together with the Institute for Ecological Economics, the Oberlin Environmental Studies Program cosponsored an "Envisioning conference" in January of 2001 that convened national and international leaders from academics, business, labor, non-profits and youth groups to develop a blueprint for a sustainable society.

In August 2001, the program hosted a National Science Foundation-funded conference that brought academics from colleges and universities around the country together to develop strategies for improving environmental studies curricula. The AJLC also hosted a "Farms to Colleges" workshop in fall of 2001 that brought together family farmers, students and college dining facilities managers from North East Ohio and beyond to consider opportunities for colleges to foster sustainable agriculture by purchasing food locally.

A sampling of the local and regional groups that make regular use of the AJLC for meetings and workshops includes the Firelands Land Conservancy, the Smart Development Coalition, Black River Chapter of the Audubon Society, Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project, Black River Remedial Action Plan Committee, Land Use Curriculum Development Committee, the Watershed Education Partnership Project, the 2020 Project, and Common Ground.

It could be argued that a number of local and regional environmental organizations have sprung into existence as a direct extension of the design efforts at the AJLC. It is quite possible that the future of architecture in Cleveland, farming in Lorain County and the main street in Oberlin will be tangibly different as a result of the AJLC.For example, the Center fostered the development of the Ecological Design Innovation Center (EDIC). Under the directorship of Brad Masi (OC '92), EDIC is now an independent not-for-profit organization that promotes sustainable agriculture and ecological design, manages the 70-acre farm site of the Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project and sponsors a variety of educational workshops (including the Farms to Colleges conference mentioned above).

Sadhu Johnston (OC '98) was initially funded by the Gund Foundation through the Environmental Studies Program to design a lecture series at the Cleveland Public Library that would bring together ecological designers involved in the AJLC with local architects and designers. Under Johnston's direction, the Cleveland Green Building Coalition has burgeoned into an enormously successful Cleveland-based organization that now sponsors numerous lectures and workshops and recently completed a green rehabilitation of a Cleveland building that now provides office space for a variety of civic organizations and houses a bank.

Closer to home, inspired in large part by a series of private readings on ecological design in the AJLC, a group of recent Oberlin graduates have formed the Oberlin Design Initiative (ODI). ODI is a town-gown collaboration with the goal of exploring and facilitating the development of an economically and ecologically sustainable downtown. ODI recently moved from the student library in the AJLC to a downtown office space.

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